Macaulay has obtained a reputation which, altho deservedly great, is yet in a remarkable measure undeserved. The few who regard him merely as a terse, forcible and logical writer, full of thought, and abounding in original views, often sagacious and never otherwise than admirably exprest—appear to us precisely in the right. The many who look upon him as not only all this, but as a comprehensive and profound thinker, little prone to error, err essentially themselves. The source of the general mistake lies in a very singular consideration—yet in one upon which we do not remember ever to have heard a word of comment. We allude to a tendency in the public mind toward logic for logic's sake—a liability to confound the vehicle with the conveyed—an aptitude to be so dazzled by the luminousness with which an idea is set forth as to mistake it for the luminousness of the idea itself. The error is one exactly analogous with that which leads the immature poet to think himself sublime wherever he is obscure, because obscurity is a source of the sublime—thus confounding obscurity of expression with the expression of obscurity. In the case of Macaulay—and we may say, en passant, of our own Channing—we assent to what he says too often because we so very clearly understand what it is that he intends to say. Comprehending vividly the points and the sequence of his argument, we fancy that we are concurring in the argument itself. It is not every mind which is at once able to analyze the satisfaction it receives from such essays as we see here. If it were merely beauty of style for which they were distinguished—if they were remarkable only for rhetorical flourishes—we would not be apt to estimate these flourishes at more than their due value. We would not agree with the doctrines of the essayist on account of the elegance with which they were urged. On the contrary, we would be inclined to disbelief. But when all ornament save that of simplicity is disclaimed—when we are attacked by precision of language, by perfect accuracy of expression, by directness and singleness of thought, and above all by a logic the most rigorously close and consequential—it is hardly a matter for wonder that nine of us out of ten are content to rest in the gratification thus received as in the gratification of absolute truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Published in Godey's Magazine in 1846.
[3] From a review of Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales" and "Mosses from an Old Manse," published in Godey's Magazine in 1846. Except for an earlier notice by Longfellow in The North American Review, this was the first notable recognition Hawthorne's stories received from a contemporary critic.
[4] Charles Wilkens Webber, magazine writer and author of a dozen books now forgotten, was a native of Kentucky who settled in New York. In 1855 he joined William Walker in his filibustering expedition to Central America, and was killed in the battle of Rivas.
[5] Evert A. Duyckinck, joint editor with his brother of the "Cyclopedia of American Literature."
[6] Charles Fenno Hoffman, poet, novelist, and critic, was related to Mathilda Hoffman, the sweetheart of Washington Irving.
[7] Passages selected from articles now printed in Volume II of the "Works of Poe," as published in New York in 1876.
[8] Charles Sprague, born in Boston in 1791, was known in his own day as "the American Pope."